RIPENING
SEASONS

Issue #43, Spring Equinox, 2002

Musings at an Uncertain Time

At the time I wrote my dismal winter letter, and up almost
to the sprout-time of my year, I wasn't at all sure there would be
another Ripening Seasons. I had emerged okay from those deep
winter blues, but with a firm resolve to get clear of any lingering
idea that it was worth thinking or writing about how this country
should or shouldn't pursue its future . . . that it was even worth
dwelling on any longer. I didn't mean this as a general proscription,
but it was the way I saw it for me, and me alone.

The writing has always been a safety-valve for me; but it only
fosters the continuing generation of steam, in a head that
continually thinks it can turn out a useful product. Like a factory,
you know. But when it became patently clear that the product was out
of touch with the current reality, well . . . it seemed a bit like
getting all enthused over sand castles that have no better future
than dissolving under the next high tide.

And yet, who of us can say what the current reality is? It has
become pretty clear, to anyone sampling the variety of information
sources available today, that they are like candle-bearers looking
for the same lost key, but on different street corners. In general,
they highlight entirely different landscapes, showing no great
interest in finding a common ground. We pick and choose among them,
for the reality of our choice.

How many of you recall the standout 1960s TV series, The
Prisoner? Patrick McGoohan, who made it work, finds himself in an
island village where life around him seems, on the surface, perfectly
normal. Yet, it becomes evident he is actually a prisoner there. He
can't leave, and no one there can tell him why, or what it's all
about. His entire reality exists in the framework of that 'normal'
community, with only the barest occasional hint that something is
amiss.

I had begun to feel like that prisoner -- with occasional clues of
a larger reality, but told consistently that 'ours' is one of
terrorists, nuclear insecurity, an 80% measure of super-patriotic
Americans, and such like that. Not caring to play any part in that
re-run of an old movie, I turned my attention toward other
possibilities.

I went ahead and signed up for two winter discussion courses at
the U -- one on the uses of myth, and the other on narrative theory;
both looked as though they could further my commitment to settle down
and devote myself to autobiography. For far too long have I danced
the Activist Adagio: for local community, for Y2K, for housing, for
worthwhile causes various and sundry -- and it sets up a constant
state of nervous tension hardly conducive to reflective writing. In
some ways, it is every bit as self-defeating as the daily grovel at a
job grind.

These are very small classes &endash; five persons in each
&endash; and they pull me back into a mode of looking at the pattern
of my life . . . where it has taken me, and what it was all about.
Getting into mythic structure, I am once again ruminating over my
fascination with the outlaw Black Bart, how that image and symbol
provided me a footing when I took the most desperate leap of my life
. . . and how perfectly it embodies the Trickster archetype, a
fundamental myth known the world over.

It refreshes my memory, too, of those truly 'outlaw' days of my
life, when vitality was discovered in the mere act of turning off the
beaten path -- a turn commonly regarded as an act of desperation or
failure. People so fear disruption. It takes a mountain of miseries
to prompt the unthinkable response of stepping outside the circle,
walking off the stage. Quitter and burnout are the epithets earned
for what is actually a very courageous (if desperately motivated)
willingness to let go of a stagnant, unfulfilling security
pattern.

We are only embedded, after all, in security patterns. Whether it
be the common one of material security, or the less obvious comfort
zones of family and friends, cities and neighborhoods, a way of life
. . . at bottom, they are all security patterns. But what I
discovered 30 years ago, and have validated many times since, is that
the world becomes real and fresh and vital, once more, when any of
those umbilical cords is severed -- best by intent, but even when it
happens accidentally.

That's what I love about hitch-hiking, of course. But even moving
to a new city or neighborhood brings a touch of it. It happens most
profoundly when such a move is radical in some way: severe
downsizing, a relocation with no specific agenda other than 'escape'
from the too oppressively familiar, moving to a foreign (or near
foreign) locale -- anything that gives you a good shaking-up. Why are
we so in fear of being shaken up, when it is invigorating and the
very source of new life?

But fearful we generally are, when security is threatened -- and
that's just what is happening in America today. We got shaken to our
boots when it quickly sunk in that there was no ready defense against
aircraft turned into missiles by the simple expedient of anyone
willing to die for his cause. Two oceans &endash; thousands of miles
of buffer on either side of us &endash; had made us so smugly secure
that we never once took seriously what others thought of us. Nor did
many care, I mean really care, about what happened to those
others. We opted to stay out of the League of Nations after WWI; and
ever since WWII, the U.N. has been treated as an arm of American
policy, often simply ignored when it has tried to serve Third World
countries we really don't give a damn about, because we've never had
to. Even now, despite the clear imperative, we tolerate no
independent sovereignty -- "You're either with us, or you're
against us!" -- Could this lead anywhere else but to war?

True, it was a gross miscalculation on the part of bin Laden, or
whoever was responsible for the impeccably executed (if foully
conceived) Twin Towers tactic, for one doesn't &endash; if they've
got any wits at all about them &endash; sucker-punch the big guy
who's been stepping on their toes, treating them like dirt, unless
they've damn well got the means to follow through on it.

Maybe he thought he did. And maybe we thought he did! We certainly
reacted as though we thought so, bombing the be-Jeezus out of a
country and people that dared to flaunt the finger at us when we
asked them to hand over the prime suspect -- which they probably
couldn't do had they wanted. And then, with the John Wayne swagger
that is America's gift to the world, declaring a war-to-the-end on
terrorism everywhere. Never mind whose country we have to invade, or
what government we have to topple.

Did you ever imagine you'd see America ready to begin a war
&endash; start one on our own &endash; against Iraq, with no
other provocation than that their government won't bend to the will
of ours, and that we fear what we think they might do?
For the first time in American history, it is openly discussed in the
daily press that we intend to be the aggressor nation. I've heard
(from a source as reliable as any, these days) that American troops
are even now massing along the Iraq border.

If this is what being the top super-power, the 'leader of the free
world,' is all about, maybe we had better re-think the whole thing.
This is not the America I was born in, or that I ever gave my pledge
to uphold -- and I'm not about to do so, today.

So here I am again, it seems, talking current events, when
my moody letter of a couple months ago swore I wouldn't. Call it a
winter fantasy, I guess, that I could entirely detach from the world
around me, yet remain involved with life. Because I saw not a shred
of hope for better times in this country, within the span of years
left to me, I imagined I could renounce any further 'waste of time'
on it. As if, because the train couldn't take me where I wanted to
go, I could stop looking out the window. Or fail to avail myself of
the amenities at way stations. Or expect any relief at all, by
letting everyone on the train know how disgusted I am with the state
of affairs. Ah, yes . . . winter fantasies.

Spring arrives again, happily &endash; another and more frequent
cyclic return &endash; and with it the melt of that frozen 'early
death' that I was winter-locked in. And I thank you, then, for your
indulgence while I got the frigidity out of my system. I'm back, now,
with all of you, still curious to see what eventuates on this always
amazing, never predictable, train ride.

Well, not quite all of you. In the fractious nature of these
times, as it must have been in the Civil War era, two longtime
friendships have ruptured. Two at least, and perhaps others have gone
borderline &endash; who can say how many? &endash; without my
knowing. The Civil War similarly split us, evenly and passionately,
along ideological lines. Vietnam, too, but it was mainly
generational. This one isn't a matter of age, it has to do with
certain subtleties at the very heart of one's being -- internal
'buttons,' pushed by last September's events but primed much earlier,
that have congealed ordinarily fluid feelings into hard rigidities.
You see it this way or you see it that way, and there is no longer
any ground of accommodation, nothing further to discuss.

Maybe I could give it a clearer definition, but I have a text for
you that will do it for me, and better. It's a long article that came
in by email, something called Parallel Realities, forwarded by Jack
Noel from the high country of New Mexico. Jack is an inspirational
soul, a friend since my hitch-hiking trip of several years ago, when
he picked me up on the highway outside of Truth or Consequences, NM,
and took me right to the door of the folks in Albuquerque I was
heading to see, whom he already knew! Jack is someone
who lives at the confluence of synchronicities, so I pay especial
attention to anything received from him, and this article struck a
chord.

As near as I can tell, this was originally a channeled piece from
an entity named Solara. It's too long to give you the whole of it,
but here's how it opens . . . [with a few bracketed observations
by me] . . .

Leaping Over The Gap . . . into Parallel Realities

On September 11, 2001 we collectively experienced what is known
as "The Shattering of All Known Worlds". The World As We Knew It
null zoned and ceased to exist. There was no more of our old
"normal". This shattering created a huge opening. It cracked open
our complacency and threw us into a state of heightened
vulnerability. It massively opened our hearts. In an instant, our
priorities were completely rearranged. Many of the veils suddenly
dissolved and numerous illusions shattered, leaving us in a
delicate place that was new and unknown.

[Think about that for a moment. The idea that
the world as we knew it ceased to exist is something we have
all now become familiar with. But consider it in the context of
another idea: that reality is a cluster of illusions. And
observe how the loss of some illusions demonstrates the
absolute truth of that metaphysical idea.]

We had left the old map and entered uncharted territory....

For many, this was a moment of great awakening. We had been
thrust out of our old world. It had simply collapsed in upon
itself and no longer existed. Although it wasn't at all
comfortable to be so vulnerable and open, we knew that we had
entered a place which was extremely real.

Suddenly stripped of our old illusions, this new place was more
real than anything we had ever known. And we realized that we had
to become more real and honest than ever before in order to
inhabit this Greater Reality.

Many people could not handle the uncertainty and fragility of
this new world. The openness and realness of it was painfully
uncomfortable. They could not go back into the old world because
it no longer existed and they were unable to go forward into the
Greater Reality.

Hence the creation of an alternate parallel reality.

[I could immediately resonate with this. I have
known, from many years of hitch-hiking, that I create for
myself an alternate reality whenever I step out on that road.
Very literally, a different set of reality illusions comes into
play, and becomes quite real for me!]

This new parallel reality is not real. It is a land of rampant
illusion. It's a place where everything is distorted; a Warped
World which represents duality's last stand. Yet, many people have
chosen to put themselves there. They have been led there by their
fears of the unknown and they are trying very hard to make it
real, to pull ever more people into believing that it's all there
is. They are feverishly trying to make this fake Warped World into
the predominant reality.

[I find that a fascinating description of what
the Bush administration is doing to the country.]

The Warped World that has grown out of the ashes of our
imploded reality is a world of coldness and hardness; a place of
ever escalating violence where love and compassion are dirty
words. It's a world of stubborn ignorance, rigid judgment,
arrogance, mindless patriotism, religious fanaticism and
heartlessness where anger, greed and political expediency rule.
It's a land where the perpetrators of hidden agendas have now
grown so confident that they are no longer subtle with their
manipulations. A place where the majority of the populace has been
lulled into a trance which requires a blind following of its
policies, religions and leaders. And sadly, it's a place where
those who are most exalted are the least qualified and evolved.
[Amen!]

Over ten years ago, I wrote about a time during our passage
through the Doorway of the 11:11 when the gap between the worlds
would widen into a great chasm. What I didn't realize then is that
this gap would not be between the World As We Had Known It and the
Greater Reality. Instead, that old world is gone and an artificial
reality has been put in its place. The gap is between the
artificial Warped World and the Greater Reality and it is growing
ever wider each day.

[I don't know what that 11:11 is all about. But
I'm familiar with the idea of a widening gap between realities,
eventually dividing them, from the writings of David Spangler,
a gifted psychic, well before ten years ago.]

The year 2002 symbolizes this gap. We have the two Zeros in
between the Twos. The Zeros represent this growing gap. Throughout
this year, we will be facing the critically important choice as to
which world we will be inhabiting. Since our old status quo no
longer exists, this will greatly help us make our decisions as to
where we anchor our beings. We can choose to go to sleep and be
unconsciously manipulated for another cycle or choose to become
very real and true and live in the Greater Reality.

2002 is a tremendously important year.... We can no longer
straddle both worlds, even if we wanted to. The contrast in
resonance is too strong. The harmonics cannot blend. As the new
year progresses, these disparate worlds will become increasingly
invisible to each other.

[That is exactly what Spangler said . . . a
difficult construct to grasp, but isn't it really happening,
when the press steadily tells us of 80% Bush ratings, but never
a word on Michael Moore's protest book, Stupid White
Men, which can't keep up with the demand? (In its 9th
printing, only a week on the shelves ... bookstores jammed with
crowds wherever he speaks ... ranked #4 on Wall St Journal
list!)]

If we choose to inhabit the Greater Reality, we must be
prepared to move our beings and our lives onto a much vaster
scale. We need to set aside our fears and start Living Large right
now. We must be aligned with our Core Beings all the time. We have
to be brutally honest with ourselves and others, following our
true feelings and doing what we really want to do. We must take
complete responsibility for our own beings and all our actions. We
need to be totally conscious about our personal responses to outer
situations. Nothing more, nothing less.

Right now, there's a struggle for control of this planet. A
sufficient portion of us must be aligned with the Greater Reality
in order to reach a state of critical mass to bring about that
long awaited shift in paradigm. We must start consciously
nourishing and embodying Love, Compassion and Oneness -- qualities
greatly needed upon the Earth at this time. Living Large and
Loving Large are essential to our future survival.

Solara goes on to elaborate this further, including the
enumeration of ways to overcome "old problems" -- the various head
trips and illusions that typically constitute our relational
stumbling blocks. If anyone is interested, I'll be glad to forward
the entire piece, by email.

But for now, I've things of more immediate and personal concern to
finish this issue with.

You'll recall that I spoke of my wife of many years (ago),
in the winter letter, as having gone into a Bay Area care facility,
in critical condition. Well, she passed on, toward the end of last
month -- the first of my life's relationship partners to take flight
from this world. I'd had enough advance warning, and our time of
relationship was so far back in my past, that the impact of loss
should not have been too hard on me. In fact, having seen her
deteriorated and helpless condition, I had reason to be grateful for
the release of it.

Nevertheless, the final exit of one so meaningful in my past
&endash; one to whom I probably owe a good deal of who and what I am
today &endash; could not expectably have been easy on me. The debt I
have to Viv goes far beyond the mere fact that my formative adult
years, from 19 onward, were spent in close companionship with her;
nor is it simply settled by the circumstance that I later found it
necessary to grow apart from her. And the term 'grow apart' is
precisely used, here, for I was eventually driven by a need for
growth that was impeded by the confinement of our marriage. I never
held this against Viv . . . she could only be herself, as I had to be
me. But escape can be as blind and heedless to consequence as it
sometimes becomes necessary.

Several years older, Viv had mentored me to a conscious awareness
of my inner self, and the part the psyche plays in outer life. She
introduced me to Pantheism, to the sacred wonder of trees and ocean,
mountain and stream: before meeting her, they were just
manifestations of natural science. Through Viv, I saw the beauty in
old Victorian architecture, heard the joy of old jazz and the sorrow
of the melodic blues: before knowing her, I thought of these as just
run-down buildings, and noisy old music. Viv opened me to part of
myself &endash; the internal feminine &endash; that I'd never had
conscious contact with before she came along. I learned from her how
to see through people's masks, and into many of life's social
illusions; and if she didn't actually plant the seed of rebellion
against thoughtless conformity, she certainly didn't let me forget
that it was in me. I could not have seen the vision that I
subsequently pursued &endash; that of a simpler and more natural life
&endash; had it not been for Viv's earlier influence on me, ironic as
that may seem.

Yes, it's a grand paradox that my rebellion had to begin against
(though not alone against) our own marriage . . . but when mentoring
finds itself entangled by love, a point is often reached where each
becomes impossible of continuance. And so, I guess, it was with
us.

In fitful ways, and over the subsequent course of time, I came to
realize that love is not bounded by the confine of a relationship --
it exists on its own, quite apart from what has happened to the
original context. But this was my own perception &endash; perhaps a
way of accepting our loss of relationship &endash; not wholly shared
by Viv, so that the separation remained hurtful to her over the
entire continuing course of her life.

That made her death &endash; her approaching death, in fact
&endash; harder on me than it might otherwise have been. Win/win
outcomes are what I have sought, in my life -- but as all of you, I'm
sure, have learned on your own, they sometimes can't seem to work
that way, try for it as we might. Which is what makes relationships
such precarious ventures. Not only are they rife with win/lose
situations, but just around every such corner is the possible
intersection with a lose/lose trail that can cost you the whole
game.

That seemed the bottom line, with Viv and me. Neither of us could
win, in the marriage we had, and the only recourse &endash; my
recourse, as it turned out &endash; was to get out of it. When it
later became clear that love can survive the loss, I discovered,
also, an unavoidable companion that comes with it: occasional regret
-- waiting to pounce in the form of guilt, whenever an appropriate
moment &endash; such as death surely is &endash; should come
along.

It doesn't matter much, in those terms, that more years have
passed since the end of our relationship than had passed in pursuit
of it; memory is an extremely hard taskmaster, when it comes to parts
of life that never had closure. Yet, I chose that course for myself.
I still recall Chuck Garrigues &endash; himself no longer with us
&endash; telling me that some kind of finalization was what I needed;
and my response, to the effect that one cannot erase the love that
remains, as though it never was. And through my several later
relationships, I never tried to.

But I'm not so sure it was a simple matter of honor and respect
for what had once been. Something in my nature, or persisting from my
young years, deeply believes that the world has only happy endings.
It is a make-believe side of me fostered by the cultural mythology
and films of my youth; but it seems to go deeper, into the very roots
of my being. I've wondered whether it is an Aries thing, ambient to
the infant and 'innocent' of the zodiac. More likely, it comes along
with my puer aeternus complex, which I have even chosen to
accentuate in the latter part of my life.

At any rate, it has tagged the years since I opted for a different
life with a make-believe aura that all would somehow work out in the
end. At various points along the way, it even took on the shade of a
workable, do-able fix.

There was the time of that magical development that provided me a
place to live in Carmel for an entire year, back in the late 1970s.
Carmel had always been Viv's favorite place, from childhood, when it
was an inexpensive vacation spot (yes, it once was!) for her family.
And we, ourselves, had lived and worked in the nearby Carmel Valley,
one summer, in happier pre-marriage days. It was perfectly natural
that I should see this sudden bestowal of a place to stay, down
there, as a threshold for the ever-foreseen 'happy ending.' And
maybe, in my reality, it really was! But Viv had never found my
newly-gained reality congenial, and so the chance of it passed us
by.

Then there was the moment of my return from Europe -- it will be
ten years ago next month. I was uprooted from Seattle by then, with
no sense that I belonged anymore here than in the Bay Area. If a
'happy ending' was ever to happen for us, that seemed at last a
likely moment for it -- and I did pose the possibility in a series of
phone conversations with Viv. I was willing to embark on that agenda
by returning to Berkeley. But our talks erupted in a sharp conflict
over timing, and it was quickly apparent that the old dynamic between
us was as formidable as ever.

That was the last effort I made, and I was able to accept the
finality of it -- finally. But on its heels came the longest, most
insistent depression I have ever lived through. Only on meeting Joy,
was I able to pull free of it.

When I went to see her, last October and again in December, it was
quite clear to me that Viv would not last for long. The looming
threat, in fact, was not her death so much as the possibility that
her life would be maintained, for no satisfaction to herself. I knew
she wanted to go, but had made no 'living will' to expedite it, and
was in no condition to do it now. I came home with the promise that
I'd see her again, come springtime, if she were still there to be
visited. And we did, I feel, have a satisfying closure on that last
visit.

When word came, of her death, a Spring equinox visit was already
in the works. In fact, there were ironies involved that have to infer
some theurgic intercession &endash; from the gods &endash; maybe to
assure that I could not simply retreat into my private sorrow, as I'd
ordinarily do at a time like this. To begin with, I had just
purchased my flight ticket online, non-refundable, the very night
before I received that morning call. But that was just the
opener.

I had scheduled a class presentation, that afternoon. A paper in
which I compared historical narrative to autobiography, going into
the part that myth certainly plays in the latter, as an argument for
its justified usage in the former. Buried in my presentation was the
tale of a personal instance of myth erupting into my affairs, long
before I was able to see it as such. The story told of a time when
Viv and I, getting back together after an early leave-taking of mine,
had found ourselves sitting next to the composer, Meredith Willson,
at a Beverly Hills High School performance of his magnum opus musical
comedy, The Music Man.

The details are not important, here; I am merely noting the fact
that my day's assignment required a reading of that remembrance on
the day that Viv died. I gave no indication of the fact, to my small
audience. But you can be sure that it stung, and left me not much
interested in the discussion of my thesis that followed. Alert,
however, to one closing observation, offered almost as a throwaway by
the class facilitator, as we were getting ready to leave.

I've gotten pretty good at picking up the easily overlooked
'message' morsel that the gods sometimes toss us; but I had to be
sharp, for this one, insofar as I was lost, that day, in the chagrin
and the cognitive discordance of my situation. Kim, the young grad
student leading this class, would laugh in puzzlement, at being
referenced as a god(ess). I'd have to explain that I don't mean her,
I mean the 'voice' she spoke, the spirit speaking through her, for it
was clearly something I needed to hear, and she could not have known.
It may have been Clio, the muse of (personal) history,
speaking through her, which would be doubly ironic, as Kim didn't
know who Clio was, when I mentioned the name in my
presentation.

In telling the Music Man tale, I noted that I now regard that
occasion as an early encounter with "an archetype that has been
largely the empowerment of my own past 30 years: the Puer
Aeternus." Having failed, at the time of the incident, to
recognize it, I added that "it would be six more years before I'd be
ready for a direct encounter with [the archetype], on my
own."

Kim's parting remark made reference to that observation. She
pointed out &endash; for no apparent reason that seemed relevant to
my text &endash; that I should bear in mind, I could not have begun
my "mythic life" &endash; as I called it elsewhere in my paper
&endash; without having accepted the death of my earlier life. What
that added up to, for me, was that I'd been 'beating a dead horse,'
in all those years of sustaining the dream of a happy ending. It was
something I definitely needed to hear, as a timely antidote for any
tendency to get lost in remorse.

So I'll be going down to the Bay Area, as per schedule, but with
something different on the agenda. Picking up on Joy's suggestion, I
plan to take Viv's ashes down the coast to Carmel, and find a perfect
spot for them, in that place where she had always wanted to be.